start of Thanksgiving prep

Insightful article

Violence explained by the NY Times

no good homeschools in town

I have already been asked where I am sending Sam to school. "School?", I say, "he's only 15 months." Kids get sent to "school" so early here. Its probably what we would call a day care, but they get sent for half day in uniform and backpack on.

I said that I will probably homeschool Sam at least for a little while to my neighbor recently. She said, "oh there are no good homeschools around here."

I chose to let that one sit before I went into a very unheard of concept.

Fall

Sam fell. Little scrape under the mouth, but cut on the inside.

Not necessarily a big deal

1. But you wouldn't believe the amount of attention he received and questions I was asked. So many neighbors asked how such a scrape could have happened! Amongst my neighbors I am one of the VERY few that does not have "maid" taking care of their little children. Mostly these maids are 7-10 year old boys or girls who are poor and often from a village. They live with these families. The maids give such close 1:1 attention that such a fall would be very unlikely to happen. And if it did, I am sure there would be [bad implications] for the maid.

I view that scrape as a necessary part of growing up, and even necessary for me as a mom, to see him get a little hurt. (not that I encouraged it, just know it will happen)

2. It happened though while we were at the park playing with the kids that live in the park. These kids live on another spectrum. They are running wild in the park all day long with minimal close supervision. 3 year olds dragging their 9 month old sibling around to play. Well, I let Sam go off and play with the crowd for a short bit while I talked to some of the older kids. I was happy to have him be included. Until I saw him running to me with blood coming from his mouth. Joe and I agreed in this context we must be counter-cultural and keep a closer eye on Sam. (Often, in certain places I am being strongly encouraged to allow others to hold or watch Sam. Next thing I know he has been taken to the next house or down the street).

Money

A friend stopped by today and asked for $120. Asking for a loan, but you are never quite sure. This sort of request is frequent. Sure you get the constant beggars on the street asking for a couple of cents. But you also get the acquaintances and friends asking for 1, 2, 3 hundred dollars. First its a culture of asking. Doesn't hurt to ask. And it is a poor country of course. Some good, honest hard working people cannot earn what they need at times. They don't go to bank, but to each other, or to us. The needs are sicknesses, weddings, house repairs, death, etc. Joe and I do have a policy to talk and pray together before we give. We usually don't give immediately. You learn too that when people need $2 they will ask for $5. Thus, we don't feel we need to give the full amount. Sometimes we say yes, and sometimes we say some, and sometimes no. Back home where we don't ask, we also aren't used to being asked. Its not easy to say no to a friend, especially if you feel like you must do it out of principle.

first camel ride

Life as they know it

I've had to take a few weeks off because life has been so busy around here. Lots of visitors and guests.

And I debated writing about this, but thought I would put it out there anyway. Hopefully it won't stir fear in concerned family members.

It was 8:20 pm last night, Sam was sleeping, and Joe and I were having our reading and relaxing time together. Then we heard a huge blast. Maybe felt it. Its hard to tell the difference. We looked at each other knowing/fearing what that was. The electricity was out per usual so no TV. Internet was working, but nothing was coming through. I went to the front window to see if people were running to their homes or any chaos was happening. No, perfectly normal. Kids were playing with their Eid animals and the workers were hanging out talking. Joe went out and asked one of them what they thought happened. He indifferently said, "terrorism or explosion". A few minutes later, he came back and said the a police station by the Sheraton was blown up. Joe asked if it was big. He said, "oooooooh yeah". Apparently it read 1.4 on the Richter scale. It happened about 3.5 miles away from us.

You never know the aftershocks of such events (i.e. rioting, city shutting down, etc) so I sent Joe out for some provisions (bread, milk, butter) for the coming days. Joe asked the people there what they thought would happen. Nothing, because it was the government that was attacked. Meaning nobody really cares about the government.

Sure enough, the next day, today, its as if nothing happened. We've all gone about our business.

Prov. 16:4